katie rose writes

How do you stay hopeful? a friend asked me this week. The question caught me off guard at first, wondering if I truly was hoping through a rough week of pain and restlessness. So I was as honest as I could be with her: It’s been hard. So hard. I think I’ve mostly tried to stay expectant that He’ll say something to me, anything to help me through. And last night, I put myself in a deliberate weak spot—in the car, traveling to go teach. I was feeling low, really non-hopeful, and was distant towards Him. I played worship music even when I couldn’t sing it, when my mouth was dry with anger over a fresh set of dashed expectations. But it was a space I knew He had to show up. And He did. I think another way I stay hopeful is by allowing myself to feel the feelings for a minute that are dragging me down. Faking my way to hope won’t get me there at all. I have to feel the hopelessness, let the tears come, as I plead with Him to Himself come. *** I fell asleep last night with t

Oh how I need you to refresh me: body-soul-spirit. Apart from you I’m nothing: a disciple-discontent. Sad and downcast Slow to learn: slower still to act. Oh how I need you to just be here: with me. It's 11 AM and I'm back in bed, exhausted, restless, and hurting. My body is burnt out, and my mind can't keep up with the demands and the desires that I'm holding with wide open hands—yet still feel like I'm clinging, clenching, holding my breath for the next thing.  I close my eyes and I listen to a friend talk about Lent and the interesting turn of events that is coinciding in her life with its onset. A few tears escape as I realize what He's trying to do with all of this pain: He's trying to enable me to admit my need. Again.  Overseas in this series of seasons I’ve lived and moved in, I have, for the most part, been healthier than ever. I've had more energy, more ability, more passion behind my beating heart. But

The early-sun stills my heart to sit, this “making room” leftover from Advent,  is now giving birth to Lent— a new season to contemplate the old, a season of dawn: of all of our hopes, retold. But first, it’s dark and the way is long the lengthening of days piling up in fog over my heart that needs hope like oxygen my soul that needs rest, breathing in, breathing out, this sound a melody where old meets new and where I meet You. You, who said that you would come— then waiting came instead; we made our home in it, its easy idols, fingers like fans, in sticky silence, maple syrup on unwashed hands, marveling, reveling like a lark revealing hearts just as dark as the stuff we play in: snuffing out our hope; we succumb to sin. You, who promised to redeem us from ourselves, make us clean in this season to be set free, not to make yet another form of slavery fasting, freedom, resisting, redemption— the same heartbeats, beating recolle